Duke University Press
  • From Scotland to Arkansas: Migration and Settlement Patterns of the Scotch-Irish
Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish. Edited by H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood, Jr. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 283.

In the title of Blethen and Wood’s volume, the word perspectives suggests the editors’ awareness that they are offering only a set of viewpoints about the Scotch-Irish. This means that still other sets are possible. Since history, like Thomas Wolfe’s fiction, is fact that is selected, arranged, and made meaningful, this is a welcome admission, especially since the volume omits areas of exploration I would like to see included. The editors, historians both, offer 12 essays with social studies perspectives and 1 for linguists, but, in their introductory essay, they admit the need for an anthropological look. Since the volume represents some 20 years of Ulster-America symposia, the editors must have had a wealth of essays to choose from, however, and this made the act of selection difficult. Still, with the history, I would like to see essays on folklore, music, literature, archaeology, architecture, and even folk medicine. Without them, the perspectives appear more geographic than philosophical.

In fairness to Blethen and Wood, I confess that we have disagreed on definitions and modes of investigating the Scotch-Irish. Their essays, the first and last in the volume, as well as the subject tilt of those in between, suggest that they still define the Scotch-Irish as Lowland Scots Presbyterians. I feel that this oversimplifies. In his foreword to the volume, T. G. Fraser of the University of Ulster would seem to agree. At least, he mentions Catholic influence “embedded in the Ulster migration of the 18th and 19th centuries.” “Catholic,” for Ulster, means Highland Scots and native Irish before the Plantation. Both groups were present in respectable numbers before any emigration—so were English, Manx, Welsh, and French Huguenots. From such a mix, would only Lowland Scots Presbyterians see the need to come to America? In an Ulster-American Symposium paper at Staunton, Virginia, historian Richard McMaster discussed finding an ethnic mix in an eighteenth-century Virginia village. I found a lot of it in Ashe County, North Carolina, where I grew up. In this volume, Catharine Anne Wilson mentions it for Amherst Island, Ontario, but places the information in an endnote: “As with the Scotch-Irish migration in the 1700’s, the emigrants were not entirely Presbyterians or of Scottish ancestry but included [End Page 328] some native Irish Catholics and members of the established church who were of English descent” (253n49). Perhaps we should define the Scotch-Irish as a culture as well as a particular group of settlers, but on this issue Blethen and Wood and I may still disagree.

Given their viewpoint, the editors have selected important essays and organized them very effectively. Following Fraser’s foreword, they use chapter 1 to present an overview of the volume. As promised, the perspectives are transatlantic. The next essay, Edward J. Cowan’s “Prophecy and Prophylaxis: A Paradigm for the Scotch-Irish?” begins in Scotland, briefly examines Scots’ beliefs in prophecy, especially the return of King Arthur, and suggests that this is evidence for a deep-rooted superstition. From Scotland, Ulster Scots acquired this conservative, anti-intellectual, and anti-enlightenment view. Presumably, they brought it with them to North America, but Cowan stops in Ulster.

Concentrating upon Ulster alone, S. J. Connolly’s “Ulster Presbyterians: Religion, Culture, and Politics, 1660-1850” indicates that original emphasis on community and discipline, order of all sorts, collapsed into evangelical conversion of individuals in the nineteenth century. Perhaps both order and emotion contributed to Ulster’s helping to found the United Irishmen society, as they did in church splits over the Westminster Confession. Still, Connolly notes that book clubs and reading societies abounded by the eighteenth century and had considerable influence. By the nineteenth century, “peculiarities of accent, custom and behavior,” marks of the Ulster Scot, had begun to disappear.

William Macafee’s “Demographic History of Ulster, 1750–1841” leads into one of the causes of emigration—overpopulation. By analyzing several kinds of statistics, he demonstrates that the glut of people resulted from lower infant mortality rates, not earlier marriages, as well as a better diet and a better economy. During the 100 years he focuses upon, the population jumped from 500,000 to 2.5 million people, before famine and emigration reduced the numbers.

Vivienne Pollock’s “Household Economy in Early Rural America and Ulster: The Question of Self-Sufficiency” connects the two geographic areas even more by means of statistics. Her studies show that, while “self-sufficiency” for the Scotch-Irish was and is a politically useful myth, they were never self-sufficient on either side of the Atlantic. Ulster border families traded in all directions, as did their counterparts in the American colonies, and there was more specialization than is generally recognized. In Ulster, such specialization led to prosperity and allowed landlords to raise rents. In both countries, people used all necessary means to survive. [End Page 329]

Graeme Kirkham’s “Ulster Emigration to North America, 1680-1720” chronicles the process, decade by decade. Focusing both on communal groups in the two countries and on ship lists, he notes departures of Quakers from Armagh to Philadelphia in the 1680s and those of Covenanters to South Carolina from 1680 to 1714. For the Presbyterians, he suggests that raised rents were a more important cause of emigration than the need for religious freedom. He also notes departure of ships from Cork, Waterford, and Dublin, as well as from Larne, Belfast, and Londonderry. But he finds that some 7,000 departed from Ulster between 1717 and 1719 and suspects that still others left from ports in Wales and England during the same period.

Trevor Parkhill’s “Philadelphia Here I Come: A Story of the Letters of Ulster Immigrants in Pennsylvania, 1750–1875” examines the push-pull theory of emigration. Opportunities in America appealed to immigrants, who wrote letters back to relatives and Ulster newspapers. The letters give details about the voyages, identify females as well as males, and fully document the preoccupation with personal advancement that we associate with the Scotch-Irish. Parkhill uses letters from Americans John Dunlop, James Homer, Robert Smith, and David Lindsay and from their relatives in Ulster asking them to sponsor still other family members. As Parkhill notes, however, the letters do not chronicle returnees to Ireland or the life of the unskilled and failures. Perhaps these were not letter writers.

If we need reminding, Catharine Anne Wilson’s “Scotch-Irish and Immigrant Culture on Amherst Island, Ontario” reminds us that the Scotch-Irish settled in parts of Canada, as well as in the 13 American colonies. With a wealth of examples, she traces 105 people to the island and a later movement of some members of their families to other parts of Canada. Unlike that stereotypical group further south known for their adventurous natures, her Scotch-Irish were “cautious, familial, and communal,” qualities some writers find dominant in Canada today. Perhaps her group included more Irish Catholics and Church of England English than the populace further South.

Russel L. Gerlach takes the Scotch-Irish into the hinterlands in “Scotch-Irish Landscapes in the Ozarks.” By means of maps and statistics, he proves what many of us intuited, that mountaineers in Missouri and Arkansas originated in the Carolinas and Pennsylvania and migrated through Tennessee and Kentucky to get there. His maps of Missouri counties with significant numbers of Scotch-Irish are valuable, as is his focus upon class structure within the group. He finds “High Scotch-Irish,” cultured plantation owners who originated in the Piedmont of North Carolina, and “Low [End Page 330] Scotch-Irish,” the semiliterate, restless, nomadic hunter/farmer types from various mountains. The latter, what most of us think of when we think of the group, owned few acres, preferred open ranges for grazing, and often sold their corn in liquid form.

Warren R. Hofstra’s “Land, Ethnicity, and Community at the Opequon Settlement, Virginia, 1730–1800” examines a community that sounds like Wilson’s Canadians. Actively recruited by original German settlers, these Scotch-Irish were as stable as their German neighbors. They selected land because of its good soil, became good farmers, and remained in place for two generations. Their families were “self-sustaining, if not self-sufficient.” Before the American Revolution, their church and communal trade kept a sense of community alive. Afterward, the third generation sold the land and divided the proceeds. The next occupants traded it at will.

In the volume’s only non-social studies essay, Michael B. Montgomery’s “Scotch-Irish Element in Appalachian English: How Broad? How Deep?” gives another theoretical examination of the group’s features in a large area. While noting the enthusiastic and unsystematic researches of Alan Crozier (“The Scotch-Irish Influence on American English,” American Speech 59 [1984]: 310–31), Wylene Dial (“The Dialect of the Appalachian People,” West Virginia History 30 [1969]: 463–71), and others, Montgomery makes good use of their word lists, as well as his own, and explores grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciations in defining Scotch-Irish elements in the speech of his geographic area. Since his methodology is easily the most rigorous of any in the volume, I hope he will extend his research into Canada and the American West, too. As one of those enthusiastic but unsystematic researchers, I have found that the Maritime Provinces duplicate a good bit of the vocabulary and other culture I learned in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Finally, in or near Montgomery’s part of Appalachia, Blethen and Wood examine the “Scotch-Irish Frontier Society in Southwestern North Carolina, 1780–1840.” In trying to identify Scotch-Irish families for research purposes, they focus on Burke, Macon, Haywood, Buncombe, and Cherokee Counties, make use of family names they recognize from Northern Ireland while excluding Scottish, Welsh, and English names and still find a larger percentage of Scotch-Irish in western North Carolina than has been found for the state as a whole. Using the same methods, they find a decline in percentage of Scotch-Irish from 40% to 20% as the frontier moved westward from North Carolina between 1790 and 1840. Here, I would have to quarrel with the methodology and conclusions. If pure Lowland Scots arrived in Pennsylvania from Ulster and if they as pure Scotch-Irish left [End Page 331] Pennsylvania for the Carolinas, they married whoever was available on the way and their progeny would have been well mixed by the time they arrived. The fact that numbers of Scots and Welsh settled near them suggests that the Scotch-Irish may have been a culture as well as a people. Given the mix in Ulster, too, it seems unwise to exclude all but Lowland Scots names from the equation. The authors are on firmer ground when they relate ethnicity to politics and religion, even to styles of living. Slash-and-burn farming with open grazing, hunting, trapping, and gathering of herbs, honey, and medicinal roots have often provided subsistence for mountain living. Wills and censuses consulted show a dominance of hogs over cattle and sheep, and that also suggests subsistence rather than prosperity.

Despite some philosophical disagreements with them, I appreciate Blethen and Wood’s putting together a volume which is both informative and thought-provoking. Every volume one reads should have these qualities. If nonhistory essays are available from Ulster-American symposia, however, I hope the editors will compile a companion volume which will examine still other aspects of Scotch-Irish culture. Their work in establishing a frontier museum at Western Carolina University and in selecting materials for that museum persuades me that they know what to look for. Nonmountaineers could profit from essays about folk medicine, building log cabins, quilt making, Irish-American music, and courtship and marriage customs. Out of these, amateurs like me could find evidence for sociolinguistic studies. If, as I believe, education is making connections, let us tie the history to all other perspectives available, including American speech.

Jack W. Weaver
Winthrop University

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